


this is a truth. we acknowledge its existence. there is i, there is you, there is she, and there is love.

by sadsunshinegirl (soldierwitch)



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Book 3: Mockingjay, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 14:50:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1270516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soldierwitch/pseuds/sadsunshinegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is her presence that hangs between them like a phantom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	this is a truth. we acknowledge its existence. there is i, there is you, there is she, and there is love.

They sit on the cold damp floor. Knuckles dragging across the ground, bone trying desperately to pierce through skin and take root. Their home is a wasteland filled with the burnt carcasses of childhood memories and the stink of tyranny. They live in underground tunnels that lack the warmth of the sun, and they somehow manage to shuffle through the days.

There is one thing that they have in common. A girl. A skeleton wrapped in flesh whose wounds have been washed away by the perfect hands of plastic surgeons. She is a symbol. A light. A beacon of hope for the masses whose eyes are beginning to lose the sheen of life.

Her hands stay tied. Fingers laced with the olive skinned boy who is slightly darker than she will ever be, and that realization has gone beyond skin deep. And he. He digs his fingernails into the backs of her hand. Trying desperately to keep her. Still. There is no need. She is as much his as he is hers. But it is her face that betrays her. The sad bow of her lips as a golden haired boy sits in her peripheral. She spends meals with the both of them.

But she is not sitting here in this moment. She is mostly likely off. Her feet taking measured steps down corridors while revolutionaries whisper plans near her ear. Too afraid of walls and their ability to hear the barest beginnings of more rebellion.

It is her presence that hangs between them like a phantom.

The crazed one. The one who held her by the throat and screamed bloody murder into her gaping mouth, he is resolutely shaking. Shivers that keep the pretense of insanity barely leashed. There are times where he wonders if muscle memory applies to the body putting on shows for the public. He thinks maybe.

Everything is a maybe to him; nothing is an absolute. Except for the carved out shape of the person that he used to be. He can still feel the blunt edge of the knife that dug out every concrete piece of his being. A hollow man clinging to love in order to fill himself with something.

They are two broken boys who crack and flake. Who need no words to communicate their shared affliction, but they use them anyway. It is better to fill the air with syllables then it is to let it hang heavy and burdensome.

"She calls your name in her sleep. Digs half moons into my skin, clawing and whispering please. What does that mean?"

He doesn't know because he wasn't there in the place that she has dreams of. And soothing her with her name doesn't work. Saying _Catnip_ over and over through lips pressed to cheeks, and neck, and hands doesn't work. He needs the boy to tell him. That need curls his fingers into his palms. He knows her better than anyone, but this is a part of her that does not belong to him. She shares it with a boy who is so fragmented that he can't keep hold of who he was, who he is supposed to be, and who he is now. But Gale needs to know.

The boy shakes his head, searches his memories and tries to find the correct one. The real one. The buzz of a force field hums in his ears, and the smell of burning flesh clogs his nostrils. He remembers.

"I died. A brief stint in the grave. A toe dip. She saw but couldn't help me. It made her arms hold me tighter as we slept."

He doesn't like the answer that Peeta gives him, but it is better than the one that he came up with himself. His answer was more physical. It was sweaty sheets and moving trains. Not a moment caught on camera, but a snapshot of activities had behind doors. But still the words leave a bitter taste in his mouth as he swallows them down.

"She talked about you. That is something that I am almost sure of. She talked about you, and she talked about Prim, but rarely did she talk about her mother."

Peeta doesn't ask why. He understands mothers are not perfect. That they are human and that they make mistakes. He knows what makes a child keep a curt tongue. And he's seen the etched in script, of a girl who acts more mother than child, on the layers of her skin. He moves on.

"There's also the fact that I'm pretty sure that she loves you."

There is no surprised turn of his head. No widening of grey eyes nor does he stammer in protest. He knows that she loves him. Has seen it reflected in light colored irises. There is a reason that he feels that she holds sway over him, and he knows what her fingertips mean as they skim up the curves of his elbows. Love is not the gaping hole between them.

"I know."

He says it simply. There is no other way to acknowledge a fact.

"She loves you too."

Peeta nods. He's heard the words spilled from the mouths of persons brave enough to stop him in the hallways. Katniss Everdeen loves him. She was scared for him, and she loves him. He knows. But knowing doesn't change into certainty for a person who is no longer certain. So her love takes up room in his emptiness, and he counts the differing ways that people make mention of it. Gale says it half bitterly, and half resigned. It is almost the way Peeta thinks of Katniss loving Gale. Though he wonders if his former self felt as grey about the matter, or if his thoughts took on darker tones. He does not know, so he cannot answer.

"We love her."

Gale's sentence settles in the air, somehow breaking the tension. Peeta is not so sure that he agrees with it, but he nods anyway. He hurts, and he rages, and he yearns, and he aches, and he needs, but love is difficult for him to wrap his tongue around. Love has an infinite number of definitions sometimes it's better to let it be the stand in when you don't know what else to call the feelings that burn through your veins.

"There are times where I wish that I didn't need her."

"There has never been a time where I wished that wasn't true."

They let the silence filter in and smother them into quiet. Too much has been said.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading.


End file.
